


And in the Fury of this Darkest Hour

by yet_intrepid



Series: fool enough to fight [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: "if you can't beat them laugh at them" - Matt Holt probably, AKA the best kind, Captivity, Coping, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Holding Hands, Implied/Referenced Torture, Shiro (Voltron)'s Missing Year, Shiro Week 2016, Singing, Song parodies, When I Say Coping I Mean Coping Via Absurdity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 20:42:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8637376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: “Hey Dad.” It’s Matt. Shiro can barely see his outline moving, but the forced cheerfulness in his voice is readily apparent. “Hey, Dad, you doing okay?”“Hey Matt.” Doc Holt sounds tired—and no wonder. Out of the three of them, he got hurt the worst in their escape attempt. Shiro can tell Matt’s torn up about it, and to be honest, Shiro is too. The escape plan was his; he should’ve been smarter about it. They haven’t been punished beyond the beating they took during recapture and then being locked back up here in the dark, but it could still happen.(Day Four of Shiro Week: friends / relationships.)





	

The cell is still dark. It’s been that way a long time now—Shiro doesn’t have access to anything that can calculate Earth-hours, but they’ve been fed twice since they were dragged back here, with long enough gaps in between that Shiro’s stomach got irritable and noisy. It’s heading back that direction again, in fact, and he sighs, leaning his head back against the wall.

“Hey Dad.” It’s Matt. Shiro can barely see his outline moving, but the forced cheerfulness in his voice is readily apparent. “Hey, Dad, you doing okay?”

“Hey Matt.” Doc Holt sounds tired—and no wonder. Out of the three of them, he got hurt the worst in their escape attempt. Shiro can tell Matt’s torn up about it, and to be honest, Shiro is too. The escape plan was his; he should’ve been smarter about it. They haven’t been punished beyond the beating they took during recapture and then being locked back up here in the dark, but it could still happen.

“I’m not so bad,” Doc Holt goes on. “You?”

“Ah, y’know,” Matt says. “Bored. And like, you know, the feeling when you try really hard to break up with someone and then you somehow don’t manage to do that? Not that I’ve ever done that, I mean, just—that’s how I imagine it. Like, wow, okay, weird clingy cat alien dudes, sometimes you just gotta call it off.”

Shiro laughs. “If they’re trying to date us,” he says, “there’s—well, there’s some major cultural misunderstandings going on. At the very least.”

“It’s an _analogy_ ,” Matt huffs.

“No, it’s not,” says Doc Holt. “I know what you’re doing, kid. You’re making excuses to sing Taylor Swift.”

“So what!” Matt flails his hands, defensive and flustered. “Look, it’s not like Katie’s here to be annoyed about it!”

“Like that’d stop you,” Doc Holt teases. “But Shiro’s here, you know.”

“Matt and I were roommates, sir,” Shiro puts in. “I’ve adapted.”

Matt jumps on it. “See! Besides, Shiro still listens to that emo shit, he can’t complain—”

“Hey, my music’s not shit—”

“And _also_ ,” Matt continues, “it fits, okay? The weird clingy cat aliens and I are never, _ever_ getting back together.”

Doc Holt groans, but it’s too late. Matt’s launched into parody.

 _I remember when we escaped, the first time_  
_Saying this is it, we’ve had enough, cause like_  
_It’s feeling like we’ve been here for a month, and we_  
_Really need some space (what?)_

“You know,” Doc tells Shiro, “I’m surprised it took this long.”

“Me too,” Shiro agrees. It’s half true. This sort of stuff is core to Matt, the kidding around and cheering people up, the laughing at terrible situations to make them more bearable. But it’s not surprising that this would throw him, make it hard to get in touch with ways to deal.

Matt’s still singing.

 _Then you come around again and say, baby,_  
_That’s cool and all but face it you’re a slave, suck it,_  
_Well that’ll last about another day; I say_  
_I hate you, we break up, you catch me, still hate you—_

He grabs at Shiro’s wrist and tries to wave it around, like a half-hearted dance. “Come on, dude.”

“I don’t know this song,” Shiro protests.

“Liar. I only played it about a million times in the dorms.”

“More like a million times a week,” Shiro grunts. “But you’re making up new words.”

“The chorus is the same!”

“How was I supposed to know that?”

“Because it still fits the situation!” He waves Shiro’s hand around some more, and Shiro twists away. He hasn’t told the Holts, but he’s pretty sure his wrist is sprained—it’s feeling a lot better than it was right after he fell on it during the escape attempt, but it still hurts.

“Shiro,” Matt cajoles, drawing out his name. “You’re so _boring_.”

“A serious accusation,” puts in Doc Holt. “What do you have to say for yourself, Shiro?”

“Uh.” Shiro considers. All his usual excuses for getting out of Matt’s ridiculous ideas have disappeared—there’s no work for him to go off and do, no errands to run or meetings to prep for. “Nothing, sir?”

“Hah,” says Matt, triumphant. “Okay, ready?”

Shiro tries to direct a pleading look at Doc Holt, but it’s too dark for them to read each other’s faces. “Fine,” he says, and he starts accompanying Matt’s enthusiastic belting with a half-hearted mumble.

 _We are never, ever, ever getting back together_  
_We are never, ever, ever getting back together_  
_You go talk to your friends, talk to my friends, talk to me,_  
_But we are never, ever, ever—_

“Shhh!” Doc Holt hisses, and Shiro goes dead silent. Matt, who has gotten up and started dancing off his nervous energy, freezes in place.

There’s talking outside the cell. Shiro strains, trying to catch what he can, but he doesn’t understand much of their captors’ language yet. He thinks he hears a string of numbers, though, which is probably a prisoner ID, which is definitely bad.

The voices stop. As the door opens, letting in dim purple light, Doc Holt pushes himself up. Shiro does too, trying to get in front of the others, but Doc Holt fixes him with a look.

“Stand down, Shiro,” he says, and tired as he sounds, there’s enough of the commander in his voice to make Shiro obey.

It’s just a couple of robots at the door, no clingy cat alien dudes in sight. But they’ve got guns and they’re stronger than they look, and besides, Shiro figures he and the Holts should try and lay low for a while. Not make anyone angrier than they have to, not till they’ve got a new plan.

Doc Holt is thinking the same, seems like. As the robots grab him, he exchanges a look with Matt. Matt sighs, drops his head.

The robots push Doc Holt out of the cell.

“Fuck,” Matt breathes, once they’ve slammed the door. “Fucking—fuck.”

Shiro peers out the slot in the door. They’ve turned left, which is hardly news—right goes to the stairwells and lifts, if he’s remembering correctly, and the guards almost never take them that way. Soon, they’re out of his limited field of view, and he backs away from the door again.

Matt collapses back against the wall. “We are never fucking _ever_ getting back together,” he says, and his voice has gone dangerously flat. Shiro sits down beside him. He’s not sure what to say or do, but at least he can be close.

“I think,” Matt goes on after a moment, a bit of the cheerfulness edging back into his voice. “Well. If there was ever a time for singing emo shit… well.”

“Yeah,” Shiro says, when Matt doesn’t finish.

“Sing me something,” Matt says. “Like—Fall Out Boy. Death Cab for Cutie. My Chemical Romance.”

 “I don’t listen to My Chemical Romance,” Shiro protests, because that seems to be what Matt wants.

“Liar.”

“Okay, maybe one or two songs,” Shiro admits. “You really want me to sing?”

“Yeah,” Matt says. He sounds so tired, and he leans his head back against the wall, even though it’s cold enough that Shiro can feel it bleeding through his shirt. “Something really angsty.”

“Okay,” Shiro says. He thinks a second, rooting around in his memory for a song to fit. “Winterborn” keeps coming to his mind: _dry your eyes, and quietly bear this pain with pride_. “Can it just be angsty?” he asks. “Or does it have to be officially classed as emo?”

“Just angsty’s fine.”

Shiro starts to hum a bit, then picks up the words. And Matt’s hand finds his, gripping like a lifeline, as Shiro keeps singing under his breath.


End file.
